Thanksgiving Day was from the British originally came to the U.S. and appreciate the American Indians’ help.

The Thanksgiving of 2015 was on Nov.26, it was Thursday. Mr.Bicknese invited me and some other students to his house for celebrating this American traditional festival. Mr. Bicknese’s family and friends are very nice people, and it’s first time for me to have the Thanksgiving Day with local people, I was full of curiosity and interest.

There are about 20 people in the house to sit at a very long dining table,looked very formal and beautiful because Mrs.Bicknese made many delicious food, such as the traditional turkey, smashed potato.

There were some food that I had never eaten, and they all tasted good, for example, the coin cheese and the stuffing that was filled the turkey. The vegetable salad was yummy too.

Another very cultural part is when Mr.Bicknese sing with everyone, to appreciate god, “everything we have is from god”, Emily and Joshua played music while everyone was singing. It’s very un-Chinese and it feels very good. We do need appreciate, I’m a Buddhist, I appreciate everything I have and have been going through.

After dinner, we started to play games, they are the big turkey, salad bow, shoe game and jungle speed. All of them are traditional American games and interesting, I had never played before. The shoe games made me laugh to stomachache. I had a lot of fun and I appreciate the Bicknese family’s invitation, it’s unforgettable memory.

My hometown has snow in winter because it is located in the southeast of China, it has four seasons, but these years, it snow little, sometimes you even didn’t know it had snowed, it melt fast before making a big pile. This is a picture that my friend sent to me a few days ago, it was from the city where I studies, just 3 hours away from my hometown.

On Nov.20,2015, it had the first snow of this year in Fayette, and it was big by snowing for over 8 hours. It was beautiful actually although I am not crazy about it.

I am from a snowing-city but I hadn’t see such big snow for years because I had lived in a summer city-Shenzhen, which is located in the south of China, in winter, the coldest weather was just about 9 degrees in Celsius. This is one of reasons I like to live in Shenzhen besides I am a stable person. 🙂

Back to the topic, the snow scenery was wonderful, it makes me think of my hometown, and my family…I miss them so much!

Nov.14,2015, that means yesterday, I was invited by Boby to go to her Bangladesh friend’s home to celebrate their festival-Dipaboli. It was first time for me to Bangladesh festival party, however, I wasn’t feeling uncomfortable because Boby and her Bangladesh friends are very nice people, they took good care of me, the new guest from China, I appreciate a lot.

And it was first time to wear Bindi. It was a lot of fun. ^^

Every culture is respectful and every one of them is interesting to me.

I was not only in a un-Chinese culture party but also in a friendship care environment. As international students, we come from all over the world, it’s destiny to bring us to meet together in the U.S., we become good companion to each other, which makes us less homesickness and feel more support.

Every party is meaningful, and our laugh is wonderful. I feel we were enjoying our time together. Thank you Boby again for the invitation, we had a awesome weekend. I would like to invite Boby and my international friends to join Chinese traditional festival and eat traditional food next time. 😀

In today’s listening&speaking class, as I shared with my classmates, the video I watched last night at TED-A Boat Carrying 500 refugees Sunk at Sea, the story of two survivors. I watched it twice and got emotional twice.

In a overloaded boat carrying 500 Syria refugees who tried their best to flee to a safe place-European country, escape from the lasting-four-year war, and find their hopes to start their new lives. They had to risk their lives to across the sea to reach Italian border. But at last, there were only 11 people survived out of the 500 people. The video was about the story of two survivors, one was a 19-year-old girl Dowia who can’t swim, and the other one was a 18-month-old baby girl Massa ( the right one in picture 2).

Dowia lost her love in this risky trip, she saw her love sunk before her eyes….

After four days floating at sea with no food, no water but sickness and fear, they were found by a searching boat, when they were sent to hospital, they were almost dying.

However, finally, the little young life survived, everybody was excited, in such a environment with no water, no food, no clothes, floating in water for four days, Massa survived!!

What war brings to people, they lost their homes, business, family separated…and what this video brings us to think is what the other countries can do for those poor refugees, why they had to take risk to across the sea rather then take a plane, why they are difficult to find a job in the other countries, why they can’t study in the other countries legally….the other countries may be worried about their own secure, economy and culture change, but, all human lives are equal…..

UIU organized the Chicago trip on Oct 24,2015, we got together at the circle drive of OSD at 6:35 a.m. when it was still dark and very chilly, but everyone was excited about the trip. We took about 5 hours to arrive at Chicago when its raining in there. We lived in the Congress Hotel, which I later heard from my uncle that it’s a good hotel that many government officers live there during of their trips.

In the afternoon of Oct 24, we went to the leading sign in Chicago-Willis Tower, which is 1450 feel high, 1730 feet including twin antenna towers. The Skydeck is 1353 feet above the ground. We actually went many other places in Chicago, all of them are great, but Willis Tower is the most favorite place to me, I was afraid of height, I went up to the 103rd store and I stood on the glass of Skydeck, it was challenging, but I did it. It was unforgettable moment to me.

People say you receive results from good effort. I saw the landscape sceneries of whole Chicago.

Later, we went to The Adler Planetarium in where we saw the earth, Sun and Mars, also Gemini 12. At night, Kai Yuan and I went to the China Town, we ate seafood hotpot which was delicious. On the second day, the Museum of Science and Industry was another interesting place, we only spent 2 hours there this time, but I think I will visit there again and spend more time there by then. We ate Lunch at a Chinese restaurant-Panda Express, and I like the food there. The last stop was the Millennium Park which looks like a big bean, it’s beautiful. I want to say, all the places we went were fantastic!

It was a two- day-one- night trip, although we felt the time was not enough, and we didn’t have time to go shopping, it was a wonderful trip because we visited many beautiful sceneries and had a lot of fun with friends.

The Americanized Halloween is famous for the horrible like uniform and an insatiable desire for sweet. On Oct 31 every year we do our scariest outfits and carve pumpkins.

Today, in American Culture class, teachers organized a pumpkin carving activity for us, I was excited because it was my first time to carve the pumpkin by myself. I actually planned the pumpkin face by drawing the picture on a paper, then I did it as what I planned, it was very interesting, I like to do handcraft!

How does my pumpkin face look like? It has a pair of heart eyes which is charming, a cute little nose that I carved into a small circle, and it has a very big smiling mouth with three sweet teeth, just like it never feels shy to smile to people. 🙂

When I finished my handcraft, I couldn’t wait to show to my teachers and classmates, but David is a Pumpkin Professional and gave me a electrical battery to light my pumpkin before showing to other people. It is wonderful when I put the little flash into the pumpkin. Now it is a pumpkin lantern, shining the whole room ^^

At last, we all finished our handworks, such as Toshi made a cool evil face, and Boby made a lovely penguin, we all did great jobs. Teachers asked us to hold our own arts and stand together to take a photo, we all love our pumpkins, we also tried to have a smiling face in the photo, however, when the photo came out, what we saw is like this….where is everybody? Only pumpkins!! 😀